Some like it hot: Collaborative event combines art, music

Last September, the owners of Gathered Art Gallery and Studios recorded the sounds made during the glass blowing process. The recordings were then used to compose music.

“We noticed, as glassblowers, what we do makes sounds, and they think about sounds like that in more of a musical fashion,” co-owner Adam Goldberg said. “We got into production mode and were making this racket, and then the musicians, the improvisers, played with it.”

For the second year, music and art will come together for Two Hot, an event at Gathered Art Gallery and Studios, 23 N. Huron St. The event is a collaborative effort between the gallery and ADJ·ective New Music. It will be free and open to the public at 7 p.m. Jan. 24, including glass blowing performances and live music from guest artists Elise Roy on flute and Matt Younglove on saxophone.

The recorded sounds include glass breaking on the floor, heat kicking on in the kilns and rods being used. The music featuring the recorded sounds will be played during glassblowing demonstrations at the event. Goldberg said glassblowing is performance art in and of itself.

Seven composers each created five-minute pieces with the recorded sounds, manipulating them to the point where a listener may not recognize them as hot shop sounds.

“They’ve made them longer, they’ve stretched them out, or they’ve made them shorter so it’s just a quick sound,” ADJ·ective New Music’s Director of Artistic Development Jamie Leigh Sampson said. “They’ve made new and interesting rhythms with the stuff that we did recording in the hot shop.”

Sampson said the composers’ favorite to use was the sound of sweeping glass from the floor.

“Almost everyone used [that sound],” Sampson said. “Because all of the different pieces of glass each have their own pitch as they are being brushed across the floor. They create their own vibrations.”

Sampson met the owners of Gathered Art in August 2012 at an open house, which the gallery hosts every month. Sampson, who lived in Bowling Green at the time, brought up partnering on an event.

“I think we were here all of 20 minutes and we said, ‘Hey, we want to have a concert here,’” Sampson said. “It kind of grew from there.”

ADJ·ective New Music officially became a business in 2010 with the primary goal of promoting new music “in its many facets,” Sampson said. Sampson, along with Andrew Martin Smith and Molly Swope Fidler, strive to “introduce contemporary music to new audiences in the concert hall, studio and classroom through group and private instruction, music production and event presentation in Northwest Ohio,” according to its website, adjectivenewmusicllc.com.

Different glass pieces, made in the studio, will be on display during the event. All the artists featured in the studio have ties to Toledo – whether they lived here before or currently do.

Gathered Art opened in April 2012, owned by Goldberg, Mike Stevens and Eli Lipman. According to its website, the gallery aims to “create an environment where artists and community members alike come together and draw from each other’s knowledge and creativity.”

The gallery sponsors regular workshops at which attendees can make items like paperweights, mugs and a variety of seasonal items.

The two businesses hope to plan more events together in the years to come. Last year, their event attracted close to 150 people. This year, there will be food and entertainment for all ages, Goldberg said.